Underground power lines present different challenges
As winds from Hurricane Irma hit, lights went off across Central Florida for about 1 million customers and frustrations mounted as power restoration dragged on into a second week.
Homeowners questioned why their power lines aren’t buried underground, where they’d be safe from wind damage.
“If a squirrel passes gas in Dommerich, we lose power,” Maitland resident Gus Bobes Jr. said of his neighborhood at a recent council meeting. “That’s just the way it is.”
Over the years utilities have moved toward putting more lines underground in Central Florida, with providers estimating between 40 percent and 65 percent of grids are buried.
But experts say the work is costly — some estimate about $1 million per mile — and they have concerns about longevity and repairs. When the power goes out, crews have to dig up lines to find the problem, as opposed to the
easier work of restringing wires over streets, said Scott Aaronson, an executive director at the Edison Electrical Institute in Washington, D.C.
Underground lines are “not a panacea,” Aaronson said. “That’s not to say it doesn’t have a place.”
Still, utilities in Orlando and Winter Park, and those that serve Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties have buried significant portions of their power lines in recent years.
“In everyday blue-sky conditions, underground proves more reliability than over ground,” said spokesman Bryan Garner of Florida Power & Light, which has about 540,000 Central Florida customers in Brevard, Volusia and Seminole. “However, if there is a flooding event, and you have underground lines, you can be much more vulnerable.”
The Kissimmee Utility Authority, which has about 55 percent of its lines underground, had to cut off electricity to flooded neighborhoods — particularly the Good Samaritan Society village south of Kissimmee — until the water receded after the storm, KUA spokesman Chris Gent said.
“Electricity energizes water and becomes a safety issue,” Gent said.
About 65 percent of Orlando Utilities Commission customers’ lines are underground, spokesman Tim Trudell said, and the city requires underground power in Lake Nona and much of southeast Orlando as well as some other planned developments, spokeswoman Cassandra Lafser said.
Trudell said OUC estimates it would take about $1.8 billion to put the rest of its grid underground.
Winter Park spends $3.5 million annually toward burying lines in hopes of having the entire city’s grid underground by 2026. Voters in the city opted to purchase its utility infrastructure in 2003 for about $50 million, due to frustrations with its provider at the time, Progress Energy — now a part of Duke Energy. To date, more than half of the city is underground, Knight said.
After Hurricane Irma, Winter Park had one underground outage because of flooding, but the rest of power outages were blamed on damage to overhead lines, spokeswoman Clarissa Howard said.
In Kissimmee, the utility buries lines in new neighborhoods and subdivisions, Gent said, however, power lines connecting those subdivisions to power plants are above ground.
The region’s largest utilities, Duke Energy and FP&L, are also working on moving more lines underground.
Duke Energy spokeswoman AnnMarie Varga said 44 percent of its wires — or 14,000 miles statewide — are buried. Garner said FP&L has 40 percent of its grid underground.
State regulations can hinder burying lines. The Public Service Commission, which regulates utility companies, restricts companies from installing underground lines if using overhead would come at a lower cost,
“The added cost has to be funded by customers who receive the benefit,” Garner said, adding the payment often comes from developers or homeowner’s association assessments.
At the same Maitland City Council meeting on Sept. 18, residents expressed frustration as power hadn’t been restored to some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods. Some were angry at Duke Energy, while others called for more underground lines and questioned why the city didn’t purchase its own infrastructure as Winter Park did.
City Manager Sharon Anselmo said the city pays Duke to bury feeder lines while the residents cover the cost to bury the meter box. Two neighborhoods were completed before the recession struck in 2007 and Maitland scaled back expanding services. In October, Maitland plans to begin work to bury lines in its Greenwood Gardens neighborhood.
Irma Smith Mazzotti was without power at her Dommerich home for 10 days after Irma.
She said she was disheartened to learn her neighborhood wouldn’t see line-burying work begin until 2019.
“We need to go underground, and we need to do it quicker,” Mazzotti said. “That’s a lot of hurricane seasons.”